


Between The Devil

by Jenwryn



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-21
Updated: 2008-04-21
Packaged: 2017-10-02 13:04:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Too many thoughts in Owen's head, and who knows which scare him most. Written after watching Episode 1.07 "Greeks Bearing Gifts".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between The Devil

**Author's Note:**

> My first Torchwood fic, pft.

Owen's not sure which is the worse out of the two emotions; which of them hits him harder, foreign as they both are, niggling away at the back of his brain 24/7. He's not terribly big on emotions at the best of times. Or at least, not the kind that niggles. He's more one for the small thrills and spills of life. Well. One for the big thrills, actually, and the more mind-blowing the better. But all things end, in Owen's world. Even the best climax can't last forever.

But this? This is different.

_Snap out of it, mate._

__ _Easier said than done._

__The guilt is probably the lesser of the two evils. Actually, it was almost a novelty in the beginning, while now it's just plain annoying. He's never really done guilt, either. It's not like he hasn't shagged handfuls of people who were officially 'taken', but they were all anonymous, women brought home from bars and clubs, with the flash of a gold ring more a challenge to him than a prohibition. In one door, a dash of pleasure, and out the other. Nothing more than faceless fucks.

_Gwen's not a faceless fuck._

__He tries not to look at her. He can hear her moving beside him. The small noises she makes in her sleep, her after-sex, sated sleep, are not yet familiar exactly, but are still somehow known to him, as though the first time his brain heard them it had registered them, stored them, filed them away.

_Why the hell do you feel guilty for, anyway?_

__ _It isn't as though you haven't hit the sack with colleagues before, so it's not that._

__ _And she's not even married._

__She isn't married. She's only got that boyfriend of hers. All the decent ones do, it's a habit for girls like her, more than anything else. Gives them someone to come home to and watch the telly with after a long day at work. That's all. So what does it matter? And what the hell is Rhys anyway? Five foot something of soft manflesh, manflesh which doesn't even fully know what his woman does with the vast majority of hours in her day. Good God, she can't even talk to him about her work!

_Since when do you want to bloody talk?  
_

_Christ, you're soft on her._

__She stirs and mumbles and half sits up, rising onto an elbow beside him. The movement of her body, the way her wild mess of bed-hair tumbles across her eyes, the feel of the crumpled sheets pulling against his own skin... he can't help but look at her now. She meets his gaze sleepily, rubbing the back of her hand against her left eye, yawning, and muttering something unintelligible that might be related to coffee, but he can't be sure. He ignores her either way, giving in to the illicit desire to simply sit in bed and look at her; breathing her in, hating himself for doing so, hating her even more for making him want to, and despising the fledgling realisation that lurks at the back of his stomach, warning him. Warning him of the second frightening emotion.

_Beware, beware..._

__ _The heart is a deadly companion._

__He hooks a slender finger amongst her hair, where it falls across her face, and brushes it aside. He's never seen anything more beautiful, and he doesn't understand it.

"Right mess you are," he observes.

"Sod off," she groans and flops back against his mattress. The sheet slides down her as she moves, baring her pale skin to his view. He laughs and traces a hand across her breasts. His mind is willing her to distract him, willing her to distract him from the dangerous territory his brain has been wandering in while she sleeps... It's the territory of inexplicable guilt, as though he's channelling her own moral high-ground, the one she's breaking by being here with him. It's the territory of fear, too, abject fear. Fear of an even more frightening emotion. Fear of the way she makes him feel; fear that he might lose grasp of his own mind in amongst it all; fear of the thought of losing whatever the hell this is. Fear of the fact that he fears at all. That fledgling realisation is like the devil in his skull.

He can't even allow himself to so much as think that four-letter word, not even the possibility of it.

He wants her, wants this, wants more than this, and still wants his freedom, all at once.

Owen doesn't do love.

He wants an impossible thing.

"No more thoughts," he murmurs, fingers brushing lightly along the rise and fall of her breathing.

She looks at him, questioning, mocking. "And thinking's bad now, is it Owen? That's bright of you."

"Mm, yes."

He ignores her again, slides across her, covers her, falls into her.

Trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea.


End file.
